100 Most Commonly Misspelled Words

If you follow me on Twitter, then you may have already seen the great list of the 100 most commonly misspelled words that I tweeted yesterday. YourDictionary.com put together the list and it’s filled with words that most people have trouble spelling.

I scrolled through the list and found several that often cause me to pause as my fingers fly across the keyboard. Accommodate and embarrass are two such words that always make me second guess myself.

The best part about the list on YourDictionary.com is that most of the words include a helpful little clue so you can remember how to spell it next time you use it in your writing. For example, remember that accommodate is big enough to accommodate two a’s and two m’s. That’s a great clue that I never heard before!

What words cause you to pause in your writing as you try to remember the correct way to spell them? Leave a comment and share those pet peeve spelling words. Maybe someone else in the Freelance Writing Jobs audience has a riddle or special way to remember the correct spelling!

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Comments

Every word gives me trouble on any given day! What amazes me is how many great creative writers hide in shame over the fact that we can’t spell. And, when I finally stood up and admitted that I was a DX’d dyslexic writer, I’ve found so many others who have come out of the woodwork to admit that although stories and subjects may whiz through our brains in Technicolor, they may not slow down enough for spelling and proofreading.

A resource like this is a godsend. Almost as awesome as spellcheck and the computer. And, since I am old enough to remember being a dyslexic writer before computers, I’ll add white out to that short list.

It’s interesting to see how these words cause problems for people, including myself. There are a few times where I really have to think about a word and type or write it out, to look at the shape of it to recognize that it’s not right. One of the most important lessons I learnt whilst learning English was that reading, and a lot of it is the best source of learning material you have. When you read, you are following a story or message through the words of another person. That person talks to you, or you hear them talking to themselves and, lets face it, as they are published they have mastered a part of the language that has enough importance to be published.

Old manuscripts such as the Book of Kells took years, and in some cases decades to produce through meticulous hard work. Writing perfectly formed letters, absolutely proportioned for clarity and magnificent artworks and ornaments. The message was of that much importance that it was published, to be frozen in all time, as it was written.

The great authors of the past have a huge lesson to teach us because we get completely unadulterated language produced by learned people. So surely I should read their works to understand my language better? Through puzzling passages comes the curiosity to investigate a word, phrase, or saying to understand it and appreciate it’s value to the context of the text. It’s that spark of want that creates the need to know what it means. That makes ones language evolve and improve over time with the understanding that it’s good, descriptive words that enable us to write better so that we too can be immortalized in the published words of our works.

I haven’t learned as much English from text books and lessons as I have reading, and listening to the forming of words and inquiring about the meaning or context of something that just doesn’t look quite right to me. At times though I do have to stop and think about a word to appreciate it’s placement, and others I have to write down because I cannot see the word clearly and then I have that eureka moment and rearrange the misplaced letters.

Language is ever evolving, and words are changing their meaning on a constant basis. Reading the classics helps teach us the actual origins of the language, and we can follow that through time to see it’s progression in presentation and interpretation.

Whenever I write anything, even an email, I always have a web browser open to my home page. Any time I come across a word, the spelling of which I’m not sure, I type it into the Google search. It takes a bit of extra time, but at least I know my finished article will not be full of spelling mistakes. It’s been proven over and over again that the Spellchecker function isn’t always to be relied upon.
But thanks for the tip on accommodate. I’ll certainly remember that one.